Page 53 of Six Days in Bombay

Petra’s hand shook as she set the paintbrush on her palette. She pulled her robe closed and crossed her arms over her chest as if she were suddenly cold. She seemed to be in shock. I waited for her questions.

“How? And how do you know?” she finally said.

“My name is Sona Falstaff. I was the night nurse in charge of her care in Bombay. She was admitted for a miscarriage. She underwent minor surgery and appeared to be recovering, but after six days…nothing could be done.” I didn’t want to tell her about the morphine, the accusation leveled against me, the gossip circulating in the halls about a possible abortion or the aspersions cast on Mira’s flamboyant lifestyle.

Her forehead creased. “She was pregnant?”

I nodded.

“But she never cared for babies. Told me she’d rather die than break open her body that way.” Her cigarette had burned down enough to scorch her finger. She dropped the stub on the floor and blew on her finger to cool it. I realized that the blackened spots on the old hardwood weren’t paint; she was in the habit of dropping cigarettes wherever she seemed to be standing.

“So what happened?” She was rocking back and forth on her heels, her arms clasped around her thin frame. I saw the glint of tears in her eyes.

I chose my words carefully. “Everything was done that could be done. I know no more.”

“Then what are you doing here?” Her tone was hostile. She wiped at her eyes with the flat of her hand.

I’d seen it before. The transition from shock to anger. I knew it wasn’t personal, so I never took it that way.

“I wondered if you’d talk to me about her. I only knew her for six days. You knew her from girlhood.”

“But I hadn’t seen her in—oh—six years. When she marriedFilip. No, wait. I saw her two years ago when she came to exhibit her work at the National Gallery. They organized a retrospective in her honor.” Petra pushed her hair back behind her ears. “She left Prague when she was fifteen to go to Florence. A few years later, her father moved the family to India.”

“So I heard.”

Petra opened her mouth, then looked over at the bed, where her male companion seemed to have fallen asleep again. She turned to her canvas with a critical eye. She’d been painting him, lying in bed, his leg uncovered, his head turned away from the viewer. She raised her voice to address him. “Looks like I’m out of charcoal paint, Henrich. I need to go out and get more.” She sat on the bed and started pulling on short boots over her bare feet.

The boy—I saw now that he couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen—raised his head, pointed to the coffeepot and said something in Czech. He sounded irritated. I was sure it had something to do with the fact that the coffee was ready and she was the one who had made him get out of bed for it.

Petra blew him a kiss and walked briskly to the door. She was still in her slip and Chinese robe.

I stood dumbly in the middle of her flat, canvas bag over my shoulder, while she opened the door and went through it. What had just happened? Was I meant to follow her?

She’d almost shut the door behind her when she stopped herself, stuck her head through the opening and gestured with her chin that I should follow.

***

Out in the street, Petra walked quickly, her robe fluttering around her. I had to jog to catch up. Most people we saw on the street were wearing suit jackets or light coats. I was comfortable in my mohair sweater over my uniform. Petra seemed neither to feel the cold out here or the stifling heat of her apartment.

Two middle-aged women with shopping bags were coming toward us, their hands encased in gloves. Each wore a jacketand skirt tailored for their figures. They looked disapprovingly at Petra’s far more casual attire, but she seemed not to notice.

She kept her voice low as she said, “It’s difficult now. You don’t know who’s listening. Which side they’re on. It’s best to keep personal business to yourself.” We turned left at the corner and kept walking along the Vltava. “There’s talk of another war. We don’t want Hitler anywhere near here but with talk of a Munich Agreement, it’s a possibility. Henrich—” she pointed back at her building “—is German-Czech. But we don’t talk about which side he’s on. I don’t want to know.” She crossed her arms over her flat chest. “Peace is fragile.”

We had walked two long blocks from her building when she entered what looked like a coffeehouse with the signKavarna Slavia.Across the street was a massive renaissance building four or five stories high. It looked as grand as the Royal Opera House in Bombay. Petra saw me looking and said, “The National Theater.”

The café walls were lined in rich red-dark mahogany. The white marble floor and the tall windows overlooking the street brought in more than enough light for a cheerful effect. The smell of coffee and pastries reminded me that I hadn’t eaten since my cream tea on the train the previous day.

It was three o’clock in the afternoon. The café was a cacophony of people chatting, glasses clinking, a man playing jazz on the piano. Every now and then staccato laughter burst through the din. Petra said hello to a great many people. There were older men in close-cropped beards who wore elaborate costumes, like the Shakespeare plays I had been to in India. Petra kissed their cheeks. She didn’t introduce me. Several young women and men called out to her to join them. She smiled and waved them off, settling for a small round table with two chairs. As soon as we sat down, she pulled a silver case out of her robe and lit a cigarette.

“Was it Filip’s?”

For a moment, I was confused by her question. “Oh, you mean the baby?” Before I could answer, she asked another.

“Was it painful for her?”

I hesitated. It was against code to discuss a patient’s medical details. “She was suffering,” I said simply. Given the heavy dose of morphine I had to administer every four hours, it was hard to tell how much pain she was in when so much would have been dulled by the medication.

There was a glass ashtray on every table, and the room was thick with smoke. Petra twirled her cigarette on the rim of the ashtray. She seemed somber now, less brusque. Her eyelashes were wet. I sensed that underneath her bold manner was a woman not fully in control of her feelings. I looked away, my eye resting on a painting of a gentleman in conversation with what looked like a female genie. Or was it a ghost?

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